Oscar-winning actor Jim Broadbent is returning to the stage for the first time in eight years to star in a one-off gala performance at London's Bush theatre next week.

Broadbent will lead read The Chapel of Unrest, a short horror story by screenwriter Stephen Volk, at the west London theatre on 15 March. Like his best-known screenplays, The Awakening and The Guardian, Volk's story is a ghostly thriller and tells the story of an undertaker attempting to raise his daughter from the dead. Bush artistic director Madani Younis will direct the fundraising event, tickets for which cost £100.

Broadbent has played the Bush before, starring in the theatre's anarchic Christmas show entitled The Fosdyke Saga Two in 1977. Alan Plater's production followed a long-running Daily Mirror cartoon series in spoofing the BBC's television adaptation of John Galsworthy's novel The Forsyte Saga. Broadbent later worked regularly at the National Theatre (as well in comedy double act the National Theatre of Brent) and the Royal Court, where he starred in the premiere of Alan Bennett's Kafka's Dick. He returned to the National in 2005 to play a devious and disgruntled ham actor killing off his critics in Improbable's Theatre of Blood.

However, he has become best known for his screen work, which includes The Iron Lady, Moulin Rouge and Iris, for which he won a best supporting actor Academy Award in 2001.

Broadbent has recently voiced a desire to get back on stage, telling reporters at a press conference for his latest film Cloud Atlas that he was keen to do some Shakespeare . "I hope to do more theatre," said the 63-year-old, who worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 80s. "If someone sends me an irresistible script I'll be there. There's loads of Shakespeare I haven't done."